Congress

House Republicans huddle with Bessent on tax policy menu

Published

2 years ago

March 11, 2025

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee huddled on Monday with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to review a large menu of tax options for the GOP’s policy agenda.

The tax writers were for the most part tight-lipped on what they discussed as they exited the all-day session at the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress. But committee members indicated that it was a productive discussion about the framework for a large bill that would enact President Donald Trump’s tax agenda, which would include an extension of trillions of dollars in expiring tax cuts.

“We’re looking at the menu,” said Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.), a freshman on the committee, adding, “I don’t think we’ve ordered anything.”

Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said he wouldn’t share anything about the details of the meeting, only that “it went very well.”

The meeting showed that House Republicans are forging ahead in crafting legislation under the budget they passed in February — even as Senate Republicans are indicating that they’d like major changes to the House framework.

Indeed, around the same time that the House tax writers dispersed, their counterparts on the Senate Finance Committee convened Monday evening to discuss the chamber’s path forward.

Those senators indicated coming out of the meeting that they weren’t close to a consensus on how to proceed on the tax cuts that have been demanded by Trump, or the size of spending cuts that would need to be included in the package to placate fiscal conservatives.

“There’s a lot more work to do,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. “The reality is we have to get this done by probably August time frame. It would be ideal to get it done sooner. … I would rather do the time and get it right.”

That’s far from the Memorial Day time frame Smith said House Republicans are aiming for to get a bill to Trump’s desk.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said “there’s no consensus” on his side of the Capitol.

“It’s a slow, challenging process,” he said. “We’re still at the early stages.”

Senate Republicans are largely united in wanting to make the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, but several said Monday coming out of the meeting that they don’t yet have buy-in from the conference on the size of spending reductions they should push for — and predicted a major fight to come. Senate GOP leaders have warned privately that it would be hard to match the House GOP’s level of cuts without touching Medicaid, a move that sparks unease among some Senate Republicans.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a member of the Finance Committee, argued for Republicans to “get serious about real spending reductions,” adding that there was $1.3 trillion in mandatory spending beyond Medicaid. He said that accepting the House plan — which sticks a significant portion of the spending cuts with one committee, Energy and Commerce — is not “serious.”

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) added after the meeting that he still does not yet support using the current policy baseline to extend the tax cuts. The accounting tactic would make it appear as though extending the tax cuts costs nothing.

In addition to the Senate Finance Republicans’ talks, which have been happening for months, GOP senators are also expected to discuss budget reconciliation, as well as a more urgent government funding deadline, during their closed-door lunch Tuesday. Republicans plan to use the reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster of the larger legislation carrying Trump’s priorities.

The dual-track between the House and Senate comes even as House Republicans want to get the bill through their chamber next month.

Republicans in both chambers know they will eventually need to merge their work products, but how or when that happens is still unclear — and some Senate Republicans are continuing to push privately and publicly for their two-bill approach, which would deal with energy, defense and border issues first and taxes second.

“Obviously we’re still waiting for top line information from the Senate, and we can then start drilling down into the particulars, but we’re getting a good sense of where members stand on the various provisions,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.).

The House adopted a budget resolution teeing up a single omnibus bill that would link together tax, defense, energy and the border last month.

But since then, Senate Republicans have largely hit the brakes as they work to determine how to get 51 votes from their own members on the spending cuts and the tax piece. They are also keeping an eye on House Republicans to see if they can meet Speaker Mike Johnson’s self-imposed timeline for getting a bill to the floor.

Asked about House Republicans kvetching during a closed-door meeting earlier Monday about the Senate not moving fast enough, one Senate GOP aide pointed back to the House quipping: “Where is their bill? If they’re cranky about our pace.”

Congress

Democrats drop $5M into Kansas Senate race

Published

12 minutes ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Democrats’ top super PAC is pushing into Kansas.

The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC is launching a $5 million statewide television ad blitz starting Saturday through Election Day — the latest sign that Democrats believe the Senate map is shifting onto red turf.

SMP had signaled in recent days it could get involved in the race, telling Blue Light News late last month it was “actively thinking” about whether to wade into the state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in nearly a century but where Adam Hamilton narrowly leads GOP Sen. Roger Marshall in recent polls. Internal SMP polling that found an increasingly competitive race factored into the group’s decision to spend. It will also run digital ads.

“The gap is closing in Kansas,” SMP spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring families understand Marshall’s real record of making health care and basic goods more expensive for working Kansans.”

Republicans are scrambling to shore up Marshall. Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super PAC aligned with Republican leadership, has booked over $10 million in ads through Election Day in the state, per ad tracking firm AdImpact.

SMP’s first ad attacks Marshall for joining Senate Republicans in voting to table a Democratic-led amendment last year to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Senate later approved legislation to release the files by unanimous consent. It’s the latest in a slate of ads from Democrats hitting their Republican rivals over the late, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Marshall’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senate Democrats’ plunge into the state comes as the midterm battle map is undergoing a major realignment. Georgia and North Carolina — primed to be two of the cycle’s premiere battlegrounds — are tilting left to the point where national Republicans are retracting spending in both states and Democrats are starting to follow suit, freeing funds on both sides to shift elsewhere.

Republicans are racing to reinforce incumbents across what was once safer red turf. SLF has also pledged $5 million to bolster Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina.

Democrats, meanwhile, are starting to spend more in red states. SMP has dropped over $2 million on digital ads in Texas. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has included Kansas and Mississippi in his pitches to donors.

Congress

House Democratic campaign arm says it needs $17 million, and fast

Published

42 minutes ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is begging for resources, and setting a hard deadline for donors to give $17 million in order to compete in a handful of districts that Republicans carried easily in 2024.

DCCC Executive Director Julie Merz said the committee needs the cash influx by Oct. 22 in order to “to take advantage of the opportunities we have” outside of the core battlefield, according to a memo shared with donors on Friday and obtained by POLITICO.

If they don’t pony up, Merz warns, the party “could be leaving winnable races on the table.”

Democrats have been clear that they have a fundraising disadvantage this cycle, but they have so far been reluctant to place a specific dollar amount on their needs, making the DCCC’s memo Friday a particularly surprising outlier.

“Here’s the tough reality though: the Republican ecosystem has amassed a massive war chest that is significantly greater than ours and is spending it,” Merz says in the memo after arguing that the members of the committee “remain confident that we will win back the majority in 25 days.”

Specifically, Merz dedicates significant portions of the memo to four districts where the committee is desperate for more money in order to compete — all of which President Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024:

— Florida’s 27th District (Trump +14.6)

— Nevada’s 2nd District (Trump +13.9)

— South Carolina’s 1st District (Trump +13)

— New York’s 21st District (Trump +20.7)

The fundraising disadvantage has created headaches for both House and Senate Democrats over where, exactly, to deploy the resources they do have.

The committee tells donors that their internal polling shows all of those races within reach, but that Republicans’ big cash advantages — especially in the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. — will make it harder to win those and other reach seats.

Merz also name drops a handful of other deep-red districts that are “worthy of additional investment in this environment,” including seats held by GOP Reps. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee.

The NRCC was quick to mock the DCCC’s memo.

“No amount of money fixes candidates voters don’t want. These seats are staying red, and Republicans are on offense across the map,” NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.

Congress

Capitol agenda: How Warren could link arms with Trump’s GOP

Published

7 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Elizabeth Warren may get her clearest shot yet to take on corporate America next year — thanks to the once unthinkable help of Republicans.

The Massachusetts Democrat is poised to chair Senate Banking if the party takes back the chamber. And while the progressive has long been a boogeyman to corporate America, lobbyists worry she’ll have powerful backup thanks to the surge of populist Republicans eager to take big swings at Wall Street and Big Tech.

One longtime financial industry lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Warren “has a streak that is not just wanting to be a progressive gadfly, but to actually reach across the aisle to push for policy ideas.” There is “absolutely” reason for concern, the person said.

Atop the panel, Warren would also have a strong position to shape the 2028 presidential debates on both sides.

“There’s very little doubt that the agenda of the Senate Banking Committee is going to overlap substantially with the core issues that the candidates in the 2028 election cycle are going to be grappling with,” said Dennis Kelleher, the outgoing leader of the progressive group Better Markets.

As Banking chair, Warren is expected to try to recruit Republicans in a crackdown on artificial intelligence — specifically restrictions on chip giant Nvidia’s exports to China, which already has some GOP support — and a follow-up of this year’s bipartisan housing law that sought to rein in private equity’s role in the market, according to people close to the senator.

Some of President Donald Trump’s own populist ideas, like credit card interest rate caps and limits on stock buybacks for defense contractors, would provide fertile ground for Warren.

But Trump would also likely be Warren’s biggest obstacle, as he’s been resistant to embrace policy overlaps with her. He’s also been resistant to any AI restrictions.

Warren’s approach also threatens to expose rifts between GOP populists who have been ascendent under Trump and more mainstream conservatives.

Asked about the possibility of a Chair Warren, Sen. Mike Rounds, a more moderate South Dakota Republican, said he doesn’t “think anything would get done except lots of investigations and lots of accusations.”

What else we’re watching:

— LAWMAKERS CLAMOR FOR GAO v. TRUMP — Lawmakers are desperate for a government watchdog to step up and help them in their fight against the Trump administration over control of federal cash. The independent Government Accountability Office concluded earlier this week that the White House illegally withheld more than $1 billion for education and health care research programs — the latest in more than a half-dozen such findings GAO has published since the start of Trump’s second term. But the agency has yet to use its unique power to take the president to court to challenge those “impoundments,” and lawmakers who are tired of the administration running roughshod over their funding prerogatives want GAO to act.

— MURPHY’S DEFENSE FUNDING ULTIMATUM — Democrats should not approve Pentagon funding or the annual defense policy bill if they control Congress next year unless those bills would hasten the end of the Iran war, Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Thursday. “We should make the end of the war a priority,” said the Foreign Relations Democrat who was returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Murphy also accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and officials of attempting a “cover-up” of the war’s damage and obscuring its true cost after he was denied entry on a base in Qatar. Given the damage to bases in the region, Murphy also told reporters that the U.S. should “reconsider its footprint” in the Middle East.

Jasper Goodman, Jennifer Scholtes and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.